“Not Everything That Falls Will Remain Fallen”: Remembering October 7

As a new academic year for the Israel Rabbinical Program began, the Hebrew Union College community in Jerusalem joined a national memorial ceremony marking three years since October 7. Students from Israel and North America, faculty, staff, and other members of the College community came together on campus for remembrance, prayer, and reflection.

The ceremony was prepared by Rabbi-Cantor Shani Ben-Or '21 and Director of the Israel Rabbinical Program Rabbi Talia Avnon-Benveniste '08 with music, prayers composed by ordinees of the Israeli Rabbinical Program, and personal reflections written by students about their experiences, including by students who survived the October 7 attacks and described their evacuation and return home.

The community was honored by the presence of Zohar Avigdori, a student in the Israel Rabbinical Program and an activist with the Hostages and Missing Families Forum. His sister-in-law and niece were abducted to Gaza, returning after approximately 50 days in captivity.

Watch a video of Rabbi Cantor Shani Ben-Or '21 and Einav Lahav, CFO of Hebrew Union College Jerusalem:

A call for responsibility

Dean Nachman Shai, Ph.D. opened his remarks by describing a sense of "fragility": a country where "one minute, one second, a fraction of a second can determine the fate of dozens of people," and where daily life has become a succession of alarms and sirens.

He spoke of the unanswered questions that have accompanied the country since that day: why the danger was not recognized, and why action was so slow, while only heroes, in and out of uniform, threw themselves into the fire. The question of responsibility, he said, remains unresolved, and it must be asked: accountability is a duty "to ourselves, to our generation, and to generations to come." This has happened before. In 1973, after the Yom Kippur War, he noted that the entire Israeli leadership of 1973 eventually left office. "No one remained in his position. That is what must happen this time as well. Beyond that, we must ensure that this disaster, which unfolded on our watch - as a people and as a society - is not erased from our national and personal memory, but instead guides future generations of leaders and citizens."

Drawing on Deuteronomy 32:7, Dean Shai taught that remembering is not only avoiding forgetting; it also means deciding what will happen next. Our task, he said, is to "renew our vision of a moral, peace-seeking, justice-pursuing society," even when speaking uncomfortable truths is unpopular.

Read the full text of Dean Shai's speech

"The promise beneath our lives"

Rabbi Talia Avnon-Benveniste '08, in her sermon "Reading Genesis After October 7," also spoke of a promise that had been broken. "And we quickly learned that when one promise is broken, others begin to fracture with it. … But no world collapses in a single day."

Jewish tradition, she noted, asks whether we can stop a downfall. Her response? "Not everything that falls will remain fallen. Because we choose to be among those who lift. To take a fallen world in our hands, and raise it again."

Read the full text of Rabbi Avnon-Benveniste's sermon

Making space for grief and hope

As the new academic year began, the community made room for grief and memory alongside the ongoing work of rebuilding lives and sustaining hope.